Northwest Arkansas? Top 10 Engineering Feats

The Northwest Arkansas Business Journal asked Robert Elliott, chairman of the University of Arkansas’ civil engineering department, to come up with a list of the Top 10 engineering projects in the history of Northwest Arkansas. Elliott polled faculty members at the UA and provided us with the following projects, listed in order of significance to the area.

1. Beaver Dam and Reservoir
Cost: $46.2 million
Primary engineer: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Completed in 1965, Beaver Dam was one of four reservoirs created along the White River by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers damming the river. The others are Table Rock Lake, Bull Shoals Lake and Norfork Lake.

Beaver Lake covers 31,500 acres and has 483 miles of shoreline. The flood pool is 1,118 feet.

“That dam allowed this area to develop like it has,” Elliott said. “The water source there is phenomenal … That’s what civil engineering is all about — allowing civilization to develop.”

The dam provides power generation and flood control. The lake is popular for fishing and water skiing. Below the dam, the water is cold enough to provide a habitat for trout and a hot spot for fly fishing. In addition to recreational activities, the lake serves as the drinking water supply for most of Northwest Arkansas.

Because the geological conditions were “kind of touchy,” several serious leaks developed in the dam and had to be repaired in the 1980s, Elliott said.

2. Interstate 540 from Alma to Fayetteville
Cost: $460 million (including the cost of Bobby Hopper Tunnel and Frog Bayou Bridge)
Primary engineer: Garver Engineers of Fayetteville

Construction of the 42-mile stretch of Interstate 540 from Alma to Fayetteville took years and was completed in January 1999. The four-lane highway opened Northwest Arkansas up to more shipping opportunities, although trucking companies such as J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell had thrived here when the serpentine Arkansas Highway 71 was the only way to snake south out of the area. Highway 71 has since been designated a scenic byway as through traffic opted for I-540.

Engineers told Elliott more dirt was moved per mile to build I-540 than to build interstates in the Rocky Mountains.

“This is old, weathered mountain, so it’s not stable,” Elliott said. “In the Rocky Mountains, you can make vertical cuts … A huge amount of engineering went into the design as well as the construction [of I-540]. Now, a huge amount of engineering is going into the maintenance.”

3. Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport
Cost: $107.9 million
Primary engineer: Day & Zimmerman International Inc. of Philadelphia, Pa.

Construction of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport (XNA) on a plateau near Highfill tripled the number of daily roundtrip flights from the area to 60. The airport opened in 1998 with a dedication ceremony attended by President Bill Clinton. Commercial airlines left Fayetteville’s Drake Field for the new facility. Drake had about 20 flights daily to five destinations. XNA has 14 destinations, including non-stop flights to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City and Denver.

XNA has an 8,800-foot-long runway with room for construction of a second runway.

“We built only what we needed and could afford from the first day of operation,” said Scott Van Laningham, executive director of the airport. “But it was designed and built so we could expand.”

The main draw of the new airport was that it offered jet service and a longer runway than the 6,000-foot runway at Drake Field.

The airport aurhority issued $15 million in bond anticipation notes to get construction under way. Llama Co. of Fayetteville, Alice Walton’s investment banking firm, bought $5 million of those notes. That debt was repaid in 1997 after a $79 million bond issue.

The 7,600-SF terminal building at the airport has since been named in honor of Walton, who is the daughter of the late Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

4. Beaver Water Treatment and Distribution System
Cost: $146.4 million (including $84.2 million expansion currently under way)
Engineers: Montgomery Watson Harza of Sacramento, Calif., Allgeier Martin of Joplin, Mo., and McGoodwin Williams and Yates of Fayetteville

The district, which was originally established in the 1960s, includes the Joe M. Steel Water Treatment Plant and the Hardy W. Croxton Water Treatment Plant. Each plant has a capacity of 40 million gallons of water per day. A third plant currently under construction will boost the capacity by 60 million gallons a day for a total of 140 million when it is completed this summer. (Renovations to existing plants will continue until November 2007.)

“Beaver Water District currently provides more than 248,000 people, businesses, and industries in Benton and Washington county with high-quality drinking water that meets or exceeds all federal and state regulatory requirements,” said Alan D. Fortenberry, CEO of the district.

“We’ve had phenomenal growth in Northwest Arkansas which would not have been possible without a plentiful supply of drinking water,” he said. “We could have as many as 700,000 people residing in this area by 2025. These rates of growth produce strains on infrastructure as cities in the region struggle to provide wastewater treatment, roadway expansions, traffic management, waste disposal and other services. Through its master planning process, however, Beaver Water District has consistently stayed ahead of a growing population’s demand for industrial and residential water supplies.”

5. Bobby Hopper Tunnel on Interstate 540
Cost: $37 million
Primary engineer: Garver Engineers of Fayetteville

The only highway tunnel in Arkansas, the Bobby Hopper Tunnel was completed in late 1998 and dedicated in January 1999.

The tunnel near Winslow has two shafts, each 1,600 feet long, 38 feet wide and 25 feet high.

“Just the construction of that tunnel was an engineering feat,” Elliott said. “You’re boring through relatively unstable mountain.”

Workers left the site one Friday, and when they returned on Monday, they discovered part of the tunnel had collapsed.

The tunnel is named for Hopper, a Springdale resident and longtime member of the Arkansas Highway Commission.

6. Winslow Railroad Tunnel
Cost: $1.5 million to enlarge in 1969. Original cost unknown.
Primary engineer: St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Co.

Completed in 1882, the 1,726-foot-long tunnel was the first in Arkansas. It opened Northwest Arkansas up to rail traffic and provided a way for area farmers to export apples.

The tunnel kept engineers from having to route the railroad miles out of the way to go around a mountain. The line through Winslow connected Fort Smith with the Frisco main line at Monett, Mo.

The tunnel, 25 miles south of Fayetteville, was unique because it is completely lined with brick, as much as four feet thick in areas. Originally, the tunnel was 19 feet high and 14 feet wide.

The tunnel was enlarged in 1969 to allow larger freight trains to pass through the mountain near downtown Winslow, which was named for Edward Winslow, president of the Frisco railway from 1880 to 1890. After that work was done, the tunnel was 24 feet high and 18 feet wide. The lining is now concrete, also four feet thick in places and reinforced by steel. The route and tunnel are used today by the Arkansas Missouri Railroad.

7. Lake Fort Smith Improvement Project
Cost: $180 million
Primary engineer: Burns & McDonnell of Kansas City, Mo.

The largest municipal public works project in the southwestern U.S., work on the Lake Fort Smith improvement project began in 2002 and is scheduled to be completed in 2006.

The project in northern Crawford County will basically do away with Lake Shepherd Springs and make it part of Lake Fort Smith. The dam at Lake Shepherd Springs will be removed, and the dam at Lake Fort Smith will be increased from 100 to 200 feet tall and from 2,000 to 3,000 feet long. A 22-story water intake tower will be built in the lake (with about 50 feet of it visible above the water level).

The project will triple the size of Lake Fort Smith from 8.4 billion gallons of water to 27.4 billion and raise the lake level by 86 feet. It will also entail moving Lake Fort Smith State Park.

Ray Gosack, deputy city administrator for public works, said the improvements will provide water to the area until 2050. Currently, 140,000 people in Fort Smith and 12 surrounding communities get their drinking water from Lake Fort Smith.

8. Frog Bayou Bridge on Interstate 540
Cost: $15.4 million
Primary engineer: Garver Engineers of Fayetteville

Near Mountainburg, at mile marker 9 on Interstate 540, is the Frog Bayou Bridge.

The bridge is 180 feet high and 2,285 feet long.

“I think it may be the highest bridge in the state of Arkansas,” Elliott said.

Elliott said the bridge was difficult to construct because of the grade and the fact that it’s on a curve.

“It’s a beautiful structure,” he said.

9. Razorback Athletic Complex
Cost: $111.3 million (Razorback Stadium) and $30 million (Walton Arena)
Primary engineer: Heery International of Atlanta (Razorback Stadium) and Rosser Fabrap of Atlanta (Walton Arena)

Completed in 1994 with 19,200 seats, Walton Arena more than doubled the seating capacity of the old Barnhill Arena.

Completed in 2000, the renovation of Razorback Stadium increased the number of seats from 50,000 to 72,000 and included an upper deck on the east side.

“The structural design for the renovation of the football stadium was a lot more complex than designing one originally,” Elliott said. “It was a significant structural problem to develop that.”

Bill Gray, associate athletic director, said the stadium renovation increased revenue from about $900,000 to $3 million per football game.

10. Fayetteville Westside Wastewater Treatment System Upgrades
Cost: $125 million
Primary engineer: Black & Beatch of Kansas City, Mo.

A $125 million bond issue in 2001 will pay for a variety of improvements to Fayetteville’s sewer treatment system.

The work, which should be completed by early 2008, includes a $42 million Westside Wastewater Treatment facility that will be able to treat 10 million gallons of domestic waste per day. The city’s current wastewater treatment facility, which is named for former University of Arkansas professor Paul R. Noland, can treat 12 million gallons a day.

Other improvements in the project include an estimated $51 million for line work and a lift station for the Westside system, $13.3 million for improvements to the Noland facility and $13.5 million for line work and a lift station at to serve the existing facility, said Stan Williams, construction coordinator for Operations Management International Inc. of Denver, which operates the facility.